--- title: Margaret Bourke-White: 'Great Lady With a Camera' description: Some of legendary LIFE photographer Margaret Bourke-White's most stirring pictures, from Liberty Island to the gates of Buchenwald. canonical: https://time.com/3735284/great-lady-with-a-camera-margaret-bourke-white-american-original/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-06-13T14:11:51.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:05:11.512Z og:title: Margaret Bourke-White: 'Great Lady With a Camera' og:description: Some of legendary LIFE photographer Margaret Bourke-White's most stirring pictures, from Liberty Island to the gates of Buchenwald. og:url: https://time.com/3735284/great-lady-with-a-camera-margaret-bourke-white-american-original/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78d7d305a1e3e71d/69878285524fc079a1decc7e/150306-margaret-bourke-white-12.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1639 og:image:height: 922 og:image:alt: Margaret Bourke-White's favorite self-portrait, made with the U.S. 8th Air Force in 1943. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Margaret Bourke-White: 'Great Lady With a Camera' twitter:description: Some of legendary LIFE photographer Margaret Bourke-White's most stirring pictures, from Liberty Island to the gates of Buchenwald. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78d7d305a1e3e71d/69878285524fc079a1decc7e/150306-margaret-bourke-white-12.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 'Great Lady With a Camera': Margaret Bourke-White, American Original > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Jun 13, 2012 2:11 PM UTC  Margaret Bourke-White's favorite self-portrait, made with the U.S. 8th Air Force in 1943. Margaret Bourke-White's favorite self-portrait, made with the U.S. 8th Air Force in 1943. Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Jun 13, 2012 2:11 PM UTC At the very real risk of belaboring the obvious, we’ll gladly state at the outset that one photo gallery can not, and will not, even begin to encompass Margaret Bourke-White’s achievements as a LIFE photographer, a journalist and a witness to the glories and barbarity of the 20th century. That said, this particular gallery has been built in the hope that a dozen memorable — and, in some cases, landmark — pictures might at least hint at the centrality of her work to LIFE, and to the story of photojournalism in the 20th century. One can make the argument, of course, that there are a few other photographers, among her peers and among the countless others who came after, whose work can match the sustained excellence of Bourke-White’s breathtaking legacy. There are a few, in other words, who were — and who are — demonstrably as good at their job as the woman known to her friends and co-workers simply as “Maggie.” But no single photojournalist’s portfolio has ever surpassed hers. No one, to put it bluntly, was ever better. (After she routinely returned alive and well, with powerful photographs, from mortally dangerous assignments — riding along on bombing runs over Nazi Germany, getting stranded in the Arctic, surviving a helicopter crash in Chesapeake Bay — she was eventually known by a new name among her LIFE colleagues: “Maggie the Indestructible.”) One of LIFE magazine’s four original staff photographers — her picture of Montana’s monumental Fort Peck Dam graced the cover of the debut issue in November 1936 — Bourke-White broke ground again and again throughout her career, notching notable assignments not only as the first woman photographer to accomplish this or that, but as the first _photographer_, period, to cover a variety of momentous events and key figures (heroic and heinous) the world over: in 1930, she was the first Western photographer officially allowed into the USSR; she was America’s first accredited woman photographer in WWII, and the very first authorized to fly on combat missions; she was one of the first (and certainly the most celebrated) of the photographers to document [the horrors of Nazi concentration camps after they were liberated in the spring of 1945](http://life.time.com/history/behind-the-picture-bourke-white-and-the-liberation-of-buchenwald/#1); she was the last person to interview Mohandas Gandhi before he was assassinated; and on and on. Here, on Margaret Bourke-White’s birthday (she was born June 14, 1904, in the Bronx), LIFE.com presents a number of her most recognizable photos, all of which appeared in a wonderful article in the June 28, 1963, issue of LIFE titled, “Great Lady With a Camera” — a celebration of the photographer that the magazine published in conjunction with the release of Bourke-White’s autobiography, _Portrait of Myself_. “Miss Bourke-White,” LIFE told its readers, “for 25 years a member of LIFE’s staff, has put her career into an autobiography. . . . The following pages include a sampling of her photographs along with her gay and moving story, taken from the book, of a tyro’s first steps to success.” Among the many thousands of words from the autobiography that LIFE published — most of which concerned Bourke-White’s fascinating (and occasionally quite amusing) descriptions of her earliest forays into photography — a brief, three-paragraph account of how she finally made her mark at the media empire that would ultimately become her professional home especially stands out: --- > “” --- --- > “” --- --- > “” --- It had. And she did. Happy birthday, Bourke-White. We won’t see your like again. _Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at_ [_@LizabethRonk_](https://twitter.com/LizabethRonk)_._  Margaret Bourke-White, 27, stands on the scaffolding enclosing the under-construction Chrysler Building in New York, 1931. Time Life Pictures—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Otis Steel Mill, Ohio, 1929. Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Russian iron worker, Stalingrad, 1930. Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Joseph Stalin's great-aunt, 1932. Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Fort Peck Dam, 1936. Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Scene at a dam-workers' Montana bar from LIFE's first issue, 1936. Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  An Allied artillery barrage at night, the Italian front, 1944. Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Buchenwald concentration camp prisoners stare in disbelief at their Allied liberators, April 1945. Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Hindus flee Pakistan in the midst of a border war, 1947. Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  South African gold miners, photographed more than a mile underground, 1950. Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  The Statue of Liberty, photographed from a helicopter, 1952. Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Margaret Bourke-White's favorite self-portrait, made with the U.S. 8th Air Force in 1943. 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